Inside Lucasfilm's Tangled Web Of Rights: What Disney Bought For $4B

Currently, Disney says it has no plans to continue the 'Indiana Jones' series.

Disney is a marvelous merchandiser. People could look back on this and say it was a steal."

In a conference call with analysts and investors Tuesday, Disney took pains to emphasize that it was more interested in wringing cash from future films and using the "Star Wars" characters to make toys and theme park rides than it is on mining Lucasfilm library of older films.

"Our valuation focused almost entirely on the financial potential of the 'Star Wars' franchise, which we expect to provide us with a stream of story-telling opportunities for years to come delivered via all relevant platforms on a global basis," Jay Rasulo, Disney's chief financial officer, said. " There are a number of ways our company will derive value from Lucasfilm's intellectual property, some of which can be realized immediately while others will accrue to us over time."

As for Indiana Jones, Disney Chairman Bob Iger said that while he loves the franchise, there are no plans to extend the series.

"Obviously he went out of way to emphasize that there is no value to the ['Indiana Jones'] franchise, but that could just be the first stepping point in a negotiating posture with Paramount," Harrigan said.

Even if Iger is right and the beauty of the deal lies in a "galaxy far, far away," for the foreseeable future, Disney will be sharing profits from the first six "Star Wars" with Fox. That means that in order to make this deal a winner on the magnitude of Disney's purchase of Marvel or Pixar, it has to do something that George Lucas himself was unable to do. Namely, recapture the magic of the initial three films in the series and avoid the pitfalls that led many critics and fanboys to revile his later prequels. In other words, a repeat of Jar Jar Binks could be costly.